Ferguson: Damaged beyond control?

Recent problems in Ferguson, Mo., seem as volatile as any such situations can be. Two articles appeared in the second week of August presenting a different point-of-view regarding them.

The first was by Joseph Epstein in the Wall Street Journal, “What’s Missing in Ferguson, Mo.” The second appeared here in the Times-News by columnist Leonard Pitts, “Recognizing, not condoning,” Aug. 14). Epstein took the approach that it was just another standard shooting of an unarmed man by a police officer — “the inconsolable mother, the testimony of … friends to his innocence, with aunts and cousins chiming in and the police chief’s earnest promise of a thorough investigation.” Epstein goes then to the riots, looting, rubber pellets and tear gas that followed. He compares it to the Trayvon Martin case, thinly positing it as its natural successor. He even throws in the fact that the victim’s mother has hired an attorney for Trayvon Martin’s family for the legal skirmishes that will follow. This seems irrelevant, but it adds effect to the theme he has offered.

His diagnosis for the mounting troubles is that minorities no longer have quieting voices as they once had in the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Roy Wilkins, Whitney Young and Bayard Rustin. Only Jesse Jackson and Al Sharpton are available. (No mention of how King, Wilkins, Young and Rustin were considered disquieting when they were actively advocating). These leaders should appear with plans for better education, jobs — but his observation implies Barack Obama won’t be one of them. It may be too much to say that Epstein’s is the “white man’s view,” but it is decidedly vanilla.

Meanwhile, Pitts’ analysis covers enough truth to stand without color references. He calls the entire incident one that so far misses the point. The carnage, he explains, “can be an act of outcry, a scream of inchoate rage.” After a description of Michael Brown’s killing, that vastly differs from that of the friend involved on the scene, he goes on to say that this is “not just about Brown.” Then are listed the recent cases of Eric Garner, choked to death by police in New York; Jordan Davis killed because he was playing his music too loud; Trayvon Martin, coming home from a candy store, shot as a thug by a “volunteer” security guard; Abner Louima, sodomized with a broomstick.

Pitts makes one feel what it’s like to be minority — to be deprived of life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness to the point of losing any benefit of doubt or presumption of innocence. If these deprivations are alleged, in the most solemn and rational way, people don’t want to hear them. Before they’re even alleged, the clever will dismiss it as “playing the race card.” But take a walk in the moccasins of the man Pitts is describing. How would you feel in just petty matters like having people look away from you or roll up their car windows, pushing the locks as you pass. I’ve had many students over the years who’ve described it personally, and until now, I’ve done little. That’s what it is to be “vanilla.”

The latest Pitt piece, (“Arrested for reporting,” Aug, 18) is bitterly graphic. The Ferguson police force, after the riots, cracked down everywhere, denying First Amendment rights to everyone, even to two reporters in McDonalds, arrested for trespassing. What this proves is though time and distance separate Philadelphia, Miss. from Ferguson, there is little cleavage in attitude.

Hence the two writers here converge only in that their solutions offer not much reality. Epstein hopes for a “modern-day Moses” but admits that none is in sight. Pitts declares that “silence imposed on pain cannot indefinitely endure.” Yet he deplores violence.

But we may be too far down the road to a peaceful ending. When “same old-same old” is trumped by “Sick and tired of being sick and tired,” it could mean uncontrolled violence. Problems out of control may need uncontrollable solutions.

It was violence in 1776 that removed intractable monarchy. Violence in 1861-65 removed slavery. Accordingly, for the unavoidable future, there is that famous phrase: “In the souls of the people, the grapes of wrath are filling and growing heavy, growing heavy for the vintage.”

Glenn Ayers regularly writes about wildlife and outdoors issues for the Times-News. He lives in Virginia.